Do you want to find out who your dad is? There are more ways than ever to fulfill this goal. The course you take toward it will largely depend on your starting point.
Let us say you know nothing about your biological father. The people who adopted you—true and genuine parents who you have loved and respected your entire life—have given you little information. Their reasons for giving you scant information about your dad are unlikely to be nefarious. They may have thought it best to wait until you were old enough to process the information and decide to do about it. It may also be the case that the history between them and your biological parents is complex, and from their point of view best left alone.
Ask Your Adoptive Parents
Now that you are of age and have a burning desire to find out who your birth father is you should take the simple and direct step of asking them: who’s my dad? It may surprise you to know that your parents can tell you who he is. They may even be able to tell you where he is or give you some information on how to find them.
Consult With The Adoption Agency
Do not be surprised, however, if your adoptive parents cannot tell you much. They may have used an adoption agency and given no facts at all about your biological father. If this is the case, then your next step should be to contact the adoption agency. If you were adopted under a closed adoption, then no information about your birth dad will be available. If you were adopted under open adoption, then the agency may have enough information about your real dad to make finding him quite easy as adoption records usually aren’t public record.
It must be said here that the choice to have a closed or open adoption is a very personal one. You should not judge either your real or adoptive parent if they decided on a closed adoption. These decisions are very difficult, and it is likely that everyone did what they thought best at the time.
Online Tools
If you are unsuccessful with putting questions to your adoptive parents and the adoption agency, then you should try an online site that specializes in finding the biological parents of adopted children.
Such background check sites have become quite popular over the last decade because they have become more robust in their ability to help adopted children put the necessary pieces together to find their biological parents. If you have a first and last name, age, and city for him, you may be able to find your father through the virtual medium.
DNA Testing
Carrying out such a search will lead you into personal histories and situations that may perplex and confuse you. It is not always possible to get complete and accurate information. You may find yourself in a situation in which a number of men could be your father. It may even turn out that you know one or two of them.
Although you want to get to the truth, it is essential that you understand that all of these men have lives of their own. You have every right to know who your real father is, but you will only be able to meet your aim if you proceed with delicacy and caution. They may understand perfectly when you say to them I want to find my real dad. But the only way to win them over to your cause is to avoid being both judgmental and accusatory.
If you are in this situation, the only way you can determine which one of the possible candidates is actually your father is through a DNA test. AncestryDNA, Ancestry.com, and 23andMe are companies that can help you get to the truth of your parentage. There are many advantages to DNA testing. They include:
- Certainty of parentage
- Cost-effectiveness
- Legal documentation
However, you need the cooperation of all the candidate dads to use such services; and this you will not get if you are bad terms with them.
Sensitivity Is Part Of The Process
Part of finding your real father is entering a constructive dialogue and relationship with the men you think might be him. You do not know the circumstances of why you were put up for adoption. Your dad may not even know he fathered a child with your mother. Although things have gotten much better on this front, there was a time that having a child out of wedlock meant ruin for a woman. Your mother may have carried you and gave birth to you in secret, and then put you up for adoption without ever telling your father or putting his name on the birth certificate.
If you were born in the last twenty to thirty years, it is unlikely that shame was the main cause of not knowing your real dad. A variety of other factors may have come into play. If you want to narrow down the list of candidates, then you should take extreme caution in your tone and manner.
Once you have received the permission of each of the men who could be your dad to use DNA to perform a test, you are on your way to learning the truth about your past. If you don’t know your dad and you want to find him then you will finally solve the riddle of who your dad is and maybe even get to meet relatives you’ve never met.
